The X-ray system is able to test fine-pitch devices as well as BGAs and CSPs.

By Jos Jans, Executive VP Marketing, Metris
PartnerTech, one of Europe's leading contract manufacturing companies, selected an X-Tek X-ray inspection system to test high-complexity boards featuring BGAs and CSPs. The company installed the inspection system at its 2,700m2 (29,063ft.2 UK manufacturing facility at Poole in Dorset. The new kit will further improve the company's capability to provide customers with fast-turn builds of highly complex devices.
Products benefiting from this technology include complex electronic and mechatronic devices that typically include BGAs and CSPs. Automatic X-ray Inspection
The inspection system from X-Tek, a Metris company, provides the highest resolution and magnification possible within a compact X-ray system for quality control, research and failure analysis. The machine has the ability to inspect substrates at steep angles of up to 75° and is designed for 100 percent BGA and µBGA, multi-layer board and PC board solder joint inspection, with quick analysis of BGA ball wetting, attachments, cracks and delaminations. The X-ray system is able to test fine-pitch devices as well as BGAs and CSPs. It provides the highest resolution and magnification possible within a compact X-ray system.
"We do a lot of rapid new product introductions for customers at the Poole facility, and many of the products feature unusual devices and geometries that cannot be visually inspected," says Rex Waygood, Technical Manager at PartnerTech's Poole facility. "We therefore needed a system that is able to perform automatic X-ray inspection (AXI) using angled views and test fine-pitch devices as well as BGAs and CSPs. Most importantly, we needed a system that gives us complete confidence that boards, particularly products that we have not built before, are assembled correctly first time." Product Lifecycle Services
PartnerTech offers its customers the full range of product lifecycle services, including product design/development, prototyping, new product introductions, test solutions, PC board assembly, full-system build, logistics, distribution and after sales. The company works in partnership with OEMs across medical, aerospace and defense, industrial and telecom markets.
"Having our own X-ray system at Poole is very important as some of the high-complexity products are built so quickly — well ahead of any in-circuit, functional or boundary scan test sequences being written — that X-ray is often the only way to validate a PC board without compromising the fast response service offered to our customers," adds Waygood.
"We selected the X-Tek system because it met our specification and performed well in tests against other comparative systems. In addition, as we had already been using an X-Tek system at our Cambridge facility for some time now, we knew that the kit would be easy to use, reliable, economic to run and that the support would be good."
Contact: Metris USA, Inc., 12701 Grand River, Brighton, MI 48116 810-220-4360 fax: 810-220-4300 Web: http://www.metris.com